A detection and diagnosis technologic industry refers to detect and diagnose products utilized to collect, prepare, examine, and analyze samples. These products comprise reagents, drugs, apparatuses, or other auxiliary devices. Generally, most of diagnostic reagents are used in vitro, and the samples thereof may be urine, feces, blood, saliva, and other body fluids of an animal, or plant tissue fluids. In the domestic market, these products majorly relate to medical examinations, comprising blood glucose or uric acid testing strips, hepatitis B or C testing reagents, HIV testing reagents, pregnancy diagnosis strips, enterovirus testing reagents, or cholesterol, triglyceride or urine enzyme immunoassay strips.
The incidence rates of diabetes mellitus (DM), hypercholesterolemia or gout are increasing year after year. In addition to control of diet and drugs for patients with DM or gout, the most important is self-monitoring. Thus, blood glucose, cholesterol, or uric acid testing strips are important for said patients.
Recently, for manufacturers of blood glucose meters in Taiwan, electrodes of biosensors are all manufactured by a screen printing procedure, and the material of said electrodes is majorly carbon or silver. Each batch of electrodes produced via the screen printing procedure has the following disadvantages.
(1) The production quality is unstable, and the defective rate defined to be a ratio of the defective number to the total number of products is in a range of 10 to 20%, which might increase the production costs.
(2) The resistance value of each said electrode is not easy to effectively control, bringing about the increase of the coefficient of variation (CV).
(3) There is poor accuracy in the determination of said electrodes.
(4) There is need for code cards to calibrate said electrodes before the determination, causing cost increase and inconvenience for users.
(5) The carbon electrode has a high resistance value, increasing the cost of the power supply thereof.
(6) The reaction of said electrodes takes longer time, which is about 10˜15 seconds.